


Blue Lips, Blue Veins

by theangstyace



Series: The Summer He Almost Drowned (and maybe enjoyed it afterward) [1]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, M/M, Mermaids, Minor Character Death, Near Death, Photographs, Pre-Relationship, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 21:03:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16668250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theangstyace/pseuds/theangstyace
Summary: The summer after Sorey turns eight, he almost drowns in the lake of his summer camp.





	Blue Lips, Blue Veins

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer, I've never actually been to summer camp my entire life so I'm basing this off of what I've seen in movies, stories I've heard from my step siblings, and what I've googled for this 
> 
> So uh, I kinda just shit this out in a night?? I meant to work on my SoC fic but??? That didn't happen?? Idk, this was spawned from a dream I had recently where Sorey was drowning and Mikleo rescued him. All in all, I thought I was done writing for this fandom but boy was I w r o n g. 
> 
> Title taken from "Blue Lips" by Regina Spektor. Roughly Beta'd

Sorey is eight years old when his mother sends him off to summer camp for the first time. While he’s sad to leave his home and family behind, he’s practically vibrating with excitement the entire bus ride there.

 

Two weeks later, it is the first time he almost drowns.

 

He’s laying on the dock surrounded by worried camp counselors, children and resident nurses. As he lays there he’s told that he fell off of the floating dock, which was approximately thirty feet out from the mainland dock, where the water was far deeper. _If you weren’t able to swim why were you out there?_ The adults ask. _You should’ve at least had a life jacket. You almost died._

 

Nobody seemed to believe him when he says he was pulled in rather than had fallen.

 

* * *

 

_There was a legend told around the campfire by one of the older counselors that there were mermaids in the lake._

 

“Rumor has it,” _said the counselor._ “That people have been pulled from their boats to a watery grave.”

 

_Older kids scoffed and blamed it on drink causing the people to fall, while the younger ones listened with hungry expressions, asking for more. Sorey only nodded, remembering the feel of a slippery hand not much larger than his own on his wrist, tugging him into the shocking cold of the lake._

 

* * *

 

In the years to come, despite the near-drowning, he makes it a habit to come back to the lake for camp when money isn’t tight.

 

* * *

 

The spring he turns twelve his mother surprises him with a Polaroid camera and the opportunity to go to camp for the summer, having skipped going the year prior because divorce was rough and _expensive_.

 

* * *

 

Sorey is getting his bag together for the three week excursion when he hears a knock on his already open door.

 

In the doorway, his mother leans against the old and cracked frame. If he squinted, Sorey could barely make out the pencil marks that marked his height over the years. If he _really_ tried, he could see his mother’s bubbly print and his father’s neat script mingle.

 

“Getting everything ready?” His mother asks, padding over on light feet. She sits at the end of the bed and watches Sorey nod.

 

Sorey zips up his bag as his mother grabs his camera from the bedside table. She turns it over in her hands once, twice, three times, and he knows that if she were to open the drawer of the table, grab the old mint tin and open it, she would find the scarce amount of photos he’s taken. One of her smiling in a way that seems rare these days. One with his father’s dog lounging languidly on the couch, tongue lolling that he had taken when he had visited for spring break. A few were of various flowers and bugs, but the token one was with Gramps his mother had taken of them the last time they had visited.

 

But, instead of opening the drawer and fishing out the tin, all his mother does is hold out the camera in offering, asking, “Do you wanna bring this?”

 

Sorey mulls it over and debates with himself in his mind. He doesn’t want to ruin the camera.. But it really _is_ beautiful up there…

 

“Yeah,” He says finally, grabbing his camera bag from where it’s hanging from the door handle of his closet. Then, he puts the camera into the bag, then sets it beside his much larger duffel bag.

 

His mother pats her thighs absently. “All set?”

 

“Think so,” Sorey says, running through a small mental checklist in his mind.

 

“Socks? Underwear? Books?” His mother asks. “The essentials?”  


“ _Mom,_ ” Sorey moans. “I do stuff at camp _besides_ reading, you know.”

 

“Mm,” His mother nods sagely. “Yes, I see. And we’re leaving out the part where you definitely _don’t_ stay up past bedtime and read with a flashlight?”

 

Sorey giggles, and his mother grins impishly, the corners of her eyes crinkling. He loves that smile. 

 

They do end up double checking to be sure, all the while cracking jokes laced with mini-lectures of _what did I tell you about forgetting sunscreen_ that really didn’t have any heat behind them.

 

They only stop at the landline in the living room ringing, and Sorey can only hope it’s good things.

 

* * *

 

One week and three days after arriving back at camp, Sorey is sitting on the dock, legs crossed, with a book in his lap and his camera next to him. He’s learnt since the first year to not let any appendages dangle above the water.

 

It’s one of the more secluded docks, which spans out somewhat further into the lake but somehow manages to stay out of sight from the rest of the camp. It’s also the older of the two, and sits much lower in the water. Sorey doesn’t mind, and takes advantage of being out of sight from the camp counselors that throw him worried looks. He squints at the page in the dim daylight, the sun low in the horizon. The water laps at the dock supports. It’s serene.

 

Then, there’s a soft splash, and a wet, scaly hand on his bare shin.

 

Sorey lets out a yelp and jumps back. His heart hammers in his chest, and with a renewed bravery he didn’t think he had, he tucks his legs underneath him, closes his book, and looks over the side. He sees what looks like a face in the water.

 

Wait.

 

No.

 

_There really is a face in the water._

 

Large, unblinking, amethyst eyes gaze up at him, showing almost the same amount of surprise Sorey feels. With lips parted, whatever the face belongs to rises up out of the water, pulling itself up onto the dock enough to prop its chest up onto the old wood of the dock.

 

It was a boy.

 

His short, fair hair fell into his face in limp waves and his arms were pale and lined with soft turquoise scales. He regarded Sorey with curiosity. Sorey felt his heart rate slow just a fraction.

 

“What… are you?” Sorey asked.

 

“What are _you?_ ” the boy asked in response.

 

“I’m a human..” Sorey answered, catching the barest of a glimpse of a tail flickering above the water. “And you’re a.. Mermaid?”

 

The boy nodded slowly. Sorey sat back on his haunches.

 

“So I wasn’t making it up..” He murmured to himself in awe. There was a pregnant pause. 

 

“Oh, I remember you,” the boy said finally. “I saw you on the dock a few summers ago. You put your hand in the water and I pulled you in. Then people kept trying to pull you out—" his nose crinkled "—I just wanted to _play_.”

 

“I almost died!” Sorey exclaimed.

 

“I didn’t know that then,” the boy said indignantly. “My mother explained humans need air; so I won’t try to pull you back in.”

 

“Thanks,” Sorey said, not quite knowing how to respond.  

 

The boy fell silent, resting his chin on his forearms. He really was beautiful, if Sorey thought about it. His hair seemed to shimmer the same turquoise as his scales. If he really thought about it, the boy seemed to be roughly the same age as himself. He watched the boy's gaze lazily scan the surroundings, then fall on his camera bag.

 

“What’s this?” the boy asked, holding up his camera bag. He wrestled with the clasp, finally popping it open. He scrutinized it.

 

“It’s a camera,” Sorey said. “Here.”

 

He grabbed it from the boy. Making sure there was still film in it, he looked through the viewfinder. Then, he took a picture.

 

The boy blinked from glare of the flash, and Sorey took the picture out, shaking it. Once the photo was developed, he held it out to the boy, who took it and inspected it.

 

“It’s… me?” He said. Sorey laughed, inching closer and grabbing the photo back.

 

The boy in the picture’s expression matched his current one: eyebrows furrowed in confusion and his lips parted. The flash had made his scales shine quite beautifully, almost like jewels.

 

“It’s supposed to be,” Sorey explained. “It captures a moment forever.”

 

“Oh,” The boy said, enthralled. Sorey could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to figure it out.

 

He looked like he was about to say something, then one of the camp counselors came over the intercom about free time being over and that it was time for dinner.

 

Sorey deflated, but made sure to gently put the photo in his bag along with his camera, and then gathered his things and rose. The boy seemed to understand, and he sunk lower into the water.  

 

As he walked away from the boy, he spoke up from the water. “My name is Mikleo.”

 

Mikleo. _Mikleo._ He’d have to write that on the polaroid.

 

“I’m Sorey,” He said over his shoulder, then turned back away towards the camp. He didn’t have to look to know Mikleo was gone.

 

* * *

 

_For the rest of his time there that summer, he sees Mikleo almost every day at the very same dock they meet at. Sometimes, when he’s out on the lake in a canoe, he swears he sees a flicker of Mikleo swimming beside the boat. In those times, Sorey feels just a little bit safer._

 

_When he comes home from camp and his mother asks him how his stay was, he smiles and tells her about what he did, all the while holding the secret of the boy in the lake and the solitary picture he has of him in the bottom of his picture tin; it stayed a well-kept secret._

 

* * *

  


As the years pass, Sorey and Mikleo become extremely close. Or, rather, just about as close as one could imagine a human and a merman becoming.

 

It started small: the next summer that Sorey had shown up, he came with several books on various things. He began showing Mikleo them, and in return the merman also showed him the various items he found at the bottom of the lake. Small trinkets lost by people past or pretty rocks or even pieces of beautifully carved driftwood. Sometimes they were gifts.

 

The year after that, Sorey brought Mikleo a bracelet. The year after _that_ , he brought him a beautiful necklace and a small dragon statuette. The latter had been the product of many lawns mowed and an entire library cleaned, but the look on Mikleo’s face when Sorey presented it to him made the work worth it. He knew how fond he had grown to be of dragons.

 

All the while, Sorey's polaroid collection grows with the merman one of his main muses.

 

* * *

 

The summer of Mikleo’s seventeenth year, Sorey doesn’t show up to the dock. Mikleo waits the entire first week that the summer camp is occupied. He follows as close to the canoes as he dares, but never catches a glimpse of the chestnut haired boy he’s grown so fond of.  

 

His mother comforts him, recalling to herself the human man she had fallen in love with when she was young. All the while, Michael seems to barely contain his smugness at being right about how his friendship with a human would end.

 

It only takes a swift glare from Muse, however, to silence him.

 

* * *

 

_That very same summer, the summer of Sorey’s sixteenth year, his mother is in a fatal car accident. That same summer, he learns just how much his father still wants him as he packs his things into boxes, damned boxes, and heads for his grandfather’s large home, the sting of rejection still fresh in his chest._

 

_In those moments, he wishes for Mikleo’s smile, for his inquisitive looks, for the way his lips quirk as he fights a smile when they debate about something from Sorey’s books._

 

* * *

 

The next time Sorey comes back to camp, he’s twenty years old, and he comes back as a counselor.

 

He comes back because Alisha and Zaveid are also there as counselors. He comes because, in Alisha’s words, _it’ll be good for him._ He comes back because Gramps’ funeral is still a fresh wound in his heart. Sorey can’t even begin to be resentful at them either. They do this because they care, and they do this so he knows he won’t be alone; Sorey can’t even begin to say how thankful he is to have that.

 

So he sings along horribly to the music that Zaveid plays and laughs at how Alisha crinkles her nose and the raunchier stuff.

 

The camp hasn’t changed much since he last came, with worn out cabins and the fraying flag that still flies on the metal pole by the main mess hall. There’s a new dock, Sorey notes as he steps out of Zaveid’s old sedan, and he can see from there the new canoes and kayaks not too far from said dock. Sorey tries to tamp down the memory of the boy in the lake. He’s long come to the conclusion that there never really _was_ a Mikleo, no matter how much it made his heart hurt from longing for a friend.

 

From there, it doesn’t take long to prepare the camp for the kids. He meets the rest of his fellow counselors—an energetic redhead named Rose, Eizen, who had been a counselor when Sorey had come when he was fourteen and fifteen, and his younger sister Edna, who didn’t even look barely seventeen but was actually nearing twenty four, and Lailah, who also acts as one of the camp nurses—and gets settled in the cabin he’s supervising with Zaveid.

 

On the night before the kids are due to arrive, Sorey can’t help but look out to the lake and wonder.

 

* * *

 

Two of the three weeks in, Sorey is sitting on the dock again. It’s well after dark, and from there he can hear Rose and Alisha leading the campers in a song around the fire. He smiles, feeling his sandaled feet skim the water. He’s almost forgotten how beautiful the sky is out in the woods.

 

He’s so lost in thought about how someone could reduce the effects of light pollution that he almost doesn’t notice the small splash of water hitting his legs. He blinked.

 

It couldn’t be true.

 

_But it was._

 

There before him, in the soft yellow glow of the outside lights, was Mikleo.

 

“Sorey?” The merman asked, less in shock and more for clarification.

 

Sorey could only nod dumbly. While it was suffice to say that he himself hasn’t changed much over the years, there was an evident change in Mikleo.

 

His hair was much longer, and it cascaded over his shoulders much like the waters he lived in. The necklace that Sorey had gifted him years ago rested just above the hollow of his throat, and when he reached his arm up to touch Sorey, he saw that the bracelet also still sat upon his dainty wrist. It also still remained dull in comparison to Mikleo’s diamond-like scales, even though the merman himself had told Sorey that the bracelet was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen when he had presented him with it.

 

Sorey, somehow managing to muster absolutely _none_ of the usual grace he had, flopped on the dock until he lay flat on his stomach, effectively putting himself face to face with Mikleo.

 

“I,” Mikleo began, hesitating. “I thought you wouldn’t come back.”

 

“Surprise?” Sorey offered lamely, feeling the tips of his ears grow warm.

 

Mikleo flicked his nose, lips set into an unintentional pout. Sorey felt himself smile, and he let his right hand skim the water. It was cold, but it was a nice distraction from the feeling of shame that pooled in his gut. It didn’t seem to go unnoticed, because Mikleo’s expression turned from irate to concerned as he held Sorey’s hand.

 

“What happened?” Mikleo asked.

 

Sorey sighed softly. “A lot,” he admitted.

 

Mikleo paused, listening to the overall chaos that was enacting from the campfire. His grip shifted on Sorey’s hand as he began to play with his fingers; it was something he had done when they initially began their friendship, Mikleo being fascinated with the fact Sorey didn’t have any of the membrane between his fingers that Mikleo had.

 

The merman pressed his cool cheek against the back of Sorey’s hand.

 

“We have time,” He murmured.    

 

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being sadder than I originally intended, but I have ideas for more lighthearted stuff later on. Thank you guys for reading, until next time.


End file.
